


your albatross

by belovedmuerto



Series: Keep You Like An Oath [6]
Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Bucky Barnes Feels, Bucky Barnes Recovering, Bucky Barnes Remembers, Gen, M/M, Soulmates, Soulmates AU, Steve Rogers Feels, sort of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-10
Updated: 2015-10-10
Packaged: 2018-04-25 18:36:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,305
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4971907
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/belovedmuerto/pseuds/belovedmuerto
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He’s here, and here is relatively safe. And Steve is here, so it’s okay.</p>
            </blockquote>





	your albatross

**Author's Note:**

> I've been sitting on this, all written and everything except for the damned ending, for a few months. I just couldn't quite get the ending done, for one reason and another. And then today I finally pushed through! Yay! So here it is. Unbeta'd because I'm sick of looking at it and just want it up. Hopefully there aren't any glaring mistakes, because I'm not sure I really care a whole lot if there are, tbh. 
> 
> But still. I hope it's okay.

Steve is vaguely nervous; he feels like he’s bearding the lion in its den, going to find Tony in his workshop. But Jarvis assures him that now’s as good a time as any to interrupt Sir, and if he could perhaps mention that Tony should think about food and sleep it would be an immense help.

So Steve goes down to Tony’s workshop.

There is music blaring, something that Steve doesn’t recognize (which isn’t really surprising, he’s further behind on music than he is on other aspects of pop culture. Also, he’s pretty sure Tony has strange taste in music. Also, he’s been really busy the past few weeks, worrying about Bucky and then showing up here to find Bucky in his apartment). Jarvis takes the liberty of turning it down as he crosses to where Tony is… fiddling… with something.

Steve doesn’t really know. He doesn’t really want to know, either. He trusts that Pepper or Rhodey or Jarvis will intervene before Tony does or creates anything truly catastrophic.

Tony looks up when the music dims, and grins at him. Tony seems strangely happy that he and Bucky are staying in the Tower, and Steve hasn’t figured out why. They get along, mostly. Sort of. But they’re not really friends. 

“Steve! What’s up?”

Tony has (mostly) stopped referring to him as various forms of popsicle, for which Steve is endlessly grateful. Although, and he would never admit this in mixed company or even really to anyone other than Natasha because she gets it, some of them were pretty hilarious. 

“How’s Robocop?” Tony adds, still grinning. (Maybe he’s having good luck with whatever project he’s working on, and that’s spilling over.)

No such luck with how he refers to Bucky, though. Steve scowls, because he doesn’t like it. Bucky doesn’t seem to mind, when Steve complains about it, but he hasn’t actually met Tony yet. He hasn’t met any of the team yet. He hasn’t even met Sam yet, although that will probably happen sooner rather than later.

Now isn’t the time, though. Steve takes a deep breath and pushes his annoyance down.

“I need a recommendation,” he says.

“For what?”

“A laptop.”

Tony furrows his brow, confused. “Don’t you have a laptop? And a tablet and a phone? I’m pretty sure you have those things, because I gave them to you. Because I am generous as well as awesome. Did you break one of them or something?”

Steve rolls his eyes. “It’s not for me, Tony. It’s for Bucky.”

“Oh. Well. What are you looking for?”

Steve shrugs. “His phone doesn’t respond to his-- to the arm? So something without a touchscreen, I guess?”

Tony makes a noise, and his eyes go faraway and unfocused for a minute, before he shakes himself and smiles again. A different smile than the one Steve sees most often. It’s almost childlike.

“Gimme a day or two and I’ll let you know, Cap.”

Steve shrugs. “Okay. Thanks, Tony.”

He turns and heads towards the elevator, and Jarvis clears his throat. Steve turns back around. “Oh, and please make sure you eat something today. And get some sleep, okay?”

Tony waves him off. “Yeah yeah yeah, okay mom.”

Steve shrugs. He tried. Jarvis thanks him for his effort on the ride back up to his floor.

\----

He’s been having good days, here, in this place. This strange living Tower with its Jarvis and its height and Steve. He knows that this is a reprieve, that the good days aren't going to last, so he's letting himself enjoy them: sleeping as long as his body and his mind allow, eating food whenever he wants, watching Steve. Watching Steve watch him.

Steve doesn't seem to be having the same reprieve as him. He doesn't seem to be having good days, although he’s certain that Steve’s bad days look nothing like his own (he hasn’t seen Steve spend a night sleeping in the bathtub yet, so how bad can they be?) and Bucky doesn't know why. Steve seems antsy and anxious, worried about something.

Worried about Bucky? Is he not doing this right?

He doesn't want to ask. He doesn't think that Steve will punish him like they did, but neither does he want to risk it.

He doesn't want to be punished anymore.

\----

It is afternoon. He’s not sure how long they’ve been in the Tower. He could ask Jarvis, and Jarvis would tell him truthfully. He could ask Steve, and Steve would answer him as well. But he doesn’t. He doesn’t think he really needs to know. He’s here, and here is relatively safe. And Steve is here, so it’s okay. 

For now.

Steve was not here earlier, and then he came back. He always comes back, at least so far. He went out with the red headed woman. Natasha. 

Bucky knows that he has met her before. He knows that he shot her that one time, and when he thinks about it he sort of remembers doing it. It also makes his head hurt, so he doesn’t think about it too much.

She doesn’t seem to hold a grudge. She says that she understands, and she knows what it’s like to be a thing that only does what it is told, and that it’s okay, and that it gets easier to be a person who chooses whether they do what they’re told or not.

It makes his head hurt.

He goes to his room. Behind him, Steve makes a noise, protest of some sort, but he’s a person and he doesn’t have to listen or respond to that. 

Natasha tells Steve it’s okay that he’s impolite. It’s better than him staying and listening to things that hurt, sometimes. He listens to her tell Steve to leave him alone for a little bit. After that, he lays down on his bed and stares at the ceiling for a while.

Steve comes to the door and knocks, and tells him that he’s going out for a while. 

He nods to show that he heard Steve, that he hasn’t gone somewhere in his own head, and Steve sighs before he turns and walks away.

When they’re both gone, he gets up again and leaves his room, goes to the couch in the living room and sits. He asks Jarvis to play him music, and Jarvis does, slow, tinkly music that is at once incredibly soothing and incredibly annoying. But it helps him keep track of time, helps him stay present, and he likes that.

Jarvis warns him, when Tony Stark is coming up to the apartment, from wherever else in the building he was. It’s the only reason Bucky is still on the couch when the elevator opens, because Jarvis had warned him, and assured him that he wasn’t being asked to leave or being detained or anything of that sort.

Tony has something in his hand, a box. He saunters into the room like he owns it, which Jarvis had once told Bucky he does. He owns the whole Tower and Jarvis as well. He created Jarvis.

He must be smart.

“Robocop,” Tony Stark greets him, and Bucky tilts his head and looks at him, and doesn’t respond. He’s not sure what a Robocop is, although it sounds interesting enough. He does recognize that the moniker is meant to refer to him, and he’s not sure he likes that.

He’s not even sure he’s Bucky a lot of the time, he’s not ready to be someone else.

“Steve’s not here,” Bucky says, after an awkward minute. Tony Stark is obviously waiting for something, but he doesn’t know what it is.

And even if he did, he’s not sure he would give it to him. Bucky is pretty sure Tony Stark is used to always getting what he wants, and he doesn’t want to give him what he wants. He doesn’t want to give away more of anything than he already has, even if it’s just words. His words are his, and he will keep them in his brain.

Except where Steve is concerned.

“Ah, yeah,” Tony Stark says, wincing a little. He shrugs. “I know, he’s out with Natasha doing whatever bro things they do together. I do not get them, do you?”

He shrugs. A shrug is a safe non-answer. And it’s not a word.

“Anyway,” Tony Stark continues. He likes giving away many, many words, it seems. Bucky doesn’t really understand why. What if words are finite? What will he do when he runs out?

“This is just a stop-gap,” Tony Stark says, holding up the box. “Just a little something I whipped up overnight, because apparently I really am a super genius. It’ll help ‘til I can get the bugs worked out of the new touchscreen stuff. And until I get the hardware updated up here so you can have virtual for when you’re here. Cool? Cool. Bye for now, tell Steve I said hi.”

Tony Stark puts the box down on the table nearest where he’s standing, turns and leaves without another word.

It was a lot of words.

Bucky curls up in his corner of the couch and puts one of the pillows over his head and shuts all the words out for a while.

\----

It is afternoon, and Steve is here again. He looks better after going out with Natasha, and Bucky wonders what they did; it is an idle thought though, nothing he’s going to follow up on. He looks a little looser; his shoulders are no longer lodged up around his ears. He’s not as tense. That’s good. He likes it when Steve is here, and when Steve seems relaxed. He’s been very tense since they came here, except when he’s asleep, and Bucky wonders if that’s because they’re here, or because of Bucky himself. He wonders at it, pushes at the thought, but he doesn’t ask. He’s not going to.

Steve is sitting close to him on the couch. Close enough that he can stretch out his legs just a little bit, and push his toes under Steve’s thigh. Steve glances up at him from whatever it is he’s doing on his tablet and smiles a little. He doesn’t reach out and pat Bucky, and Bucky thinks perhaps he wishes that Steve would touch him, casually.

He thinks he might be okay with that. It might make him feel less tense. Or it might make him feel more tense, he’s not sure. He’d like to find out, but he doesn’t ask. 

“What was I like, before?” he asks, instead.

Steve looks at him, sharp, eyes wide. Surprise. Steve is surprised. Bucky watches Steve’s bright blue eyes fill with tears, and Steve puts down his tablet and gets up without a word and crosses the room to the window.

Bucky turns his head where it’s resting on his knees and watches him. He watches Steve’s shoulders climb back up to his ears, watches him hunch against whatever storm of emotion he’s withstanding, and he watches him tremble, and he hears the tiny sound Steve tries to muffle. 

After a minute or three, Steve takes a deep breath. Bucky watches that happen as well. He watches Steve’s reflection in the window, watches him wipe his face and turn around with a rueful smile.

Steve doesn’t apologize, but he does come back. He comes back and sits down right where he was. 

Bucky’s not sure if he should put his toes back under Steve’s thigh, but after a minute, he risks it. Steve smiles at him, a sad sort of smile.

“Sorry I made you sad,” Bucky says. And he is. He doesn’t like when Steve is sad; Steve’s been sad a lot, since Bucky came here and met him, and he’s pretty sure it’s all because of him. He doesn’t like it at all.

Steve shakes his head. “No, Buck. Don’t apologize. You can always ask me whatever you want. I just-- I don’t know how much you remember.”

Steve holds up a hand to stop Bucky from answering. “You don’t have to tell me. You don’t have to tell me anything you don’t want to, Buck. I don’t care how much you remember, it doesn’t really matter, really, and I’ll always tell you whatever you want me to tell you, or not tell you, or whatever.”

Bucky shrugs. He’s not really sure how much he remembers, even though he spent weeks on his own sleeping and sleeping and sleeping while his memories rewrote themselves. “They’re slippery,” he says. “I remember more of you than myself. You’re in all of my memories of before. You glow.”

Steve reaches out towards him, and then stops, with his hand hovering over Bucky’s ankle, and looks a question at him. Bucky nods, and Steve’s fingers wrap around his ankle, soft and gentle and grounding. Bucky slides his feet forward so his toes are a little further under Steve’s thigh, and Steve’s hand stays around his ankle, and it’s nice. It’s good, this contact between them. A sort of closeness. He likes it. Bucky rests his chin on his knee and looks at Steve.

Steve doesn’t ask him about the words he’s given him. He doesn’t ask what Bucky meant by saying that Steve glows in all his memories of him. Maybe Bucky glows in Steve’s memories of him as well. Maybe someday he’ll ask about that.

“You were always the most important person in my life,” Steve says. He’s not looking at Bucky, and his voice is soft and something that Bucky cannot identify. He doesn’t have the words for this, and he doesn’t know where to find them. 

“Even before I figured out that we’re soulmates, you were the biggest presence in my life. Even bigger than my ma. I think she figured it out ages before me.”

Bucky recalls the fierceness he’d felt when he’d gone to spy on Steve in the hospital, the _need_ to claim him, even before he’d known who he was, beyond the mission, beyond pulling him out of the Potomac.

“Mine,” he murmurs. He doesn’t mean to let that word go, but it slips out, and Steve looks at him and smiles, rubs his thumb along the skin of Bucky’s ankle.

“Yeah, Buck,” Steve agrees. “I am.”

Bucky tries to smile back at him, but he’s not sure it works, and he turns his face away for a minute, and listens while Steve talks to him about himself.

“You were real charming, even as a kid. One of those fellas who would make new friends just walking down the street, yanno?”

Bucky looks back at him and wonders how he was ever able to look at people and not see targets. 

Steve stops talking and nods. “Yeah, I know, I do too now,” he says, as though Bucky had voiced that thought aloud. He feels his mouth turn down at the corners, and Steve smiles ruefully and shrugs. 

“You were kind; I always wondered how you did it, how you could always give away so much of yourself, even when you didn’t really have anything to give. You’ve always been a lot nicer than me. I was always too angry to be all that nice; I feel like I’ve been making up for lost time.”

Bucky makes a noise of protest at that, because if there’s one thing he knows, it’s that he’s not _kind_ , and he doubts he ever really was. Selfish, probably. He feels like he’s very selfish and probably always has been.

Especially when it comes to Steve Rogers.

Steve cries a little bit, while he’s talking about the Bucky Barnes he remembers growing up with, and Bucky feels something about that. But he’s also glad that one of them can cry. One of them can mourn Bucky Barnes, and it’s certainly not him. So it’s good that Steve can. Steve should, because the Bucky Barnes that he grew up with is dead, long dead.

Bucky doesn’t know how to tell him that.

But maybe he already knows, because he favors Bucky with a look that tells him to shut the fuck up even though he hasn’t actually said anything. He does this while he’s wiping tears off his face with the hand that isn’t busy wrapped around his ankle, and Bucky drops his right hand down so it trails down Steve’s arm, before replacing it.

He likes touching Steve. That’s something he can hold on to. He likes touching Steve, and even if he isn’t the same Bucky Barnes that was originally Steve’s soulmate, Steve is still _his_ , and nothing is going to change that.

He lets Steve’s voice, soothing and warm, wash over him, wrap around him. He doesn’t really respond to the things Steve is telling him, but he takes them all in, and he wonders. He wonders if he’ll be any of those things again, or if he’s even capable.

It doesn’t really feel like Steve expects him to be the same fella he used to be, though. He can’t really tell for sure. But it doesn’t feel like Steve is asking him to be the Bucky Barnes who grew up at Steve’s side.

He is glad, on some level, that the Bucky Barnes he maybe once was kept the Steve Rogers who still crouches inside the man sitting next to him alive. Part of him did that. Part of Bucky kept that scrappy, sick little kid alive.

If nothing else, he can hold onto that. He can be proud of that.

But he’s selfish, too. Bucky can see how sad he makes Steve. He is not happy. And that is on Bucky. Bucky, who came to him, who made himself a weight around Steve’s neck. He feels heavy with it. He is bound to drag Steve down, with his selfishness, his need to be _near_ Steve. Because he doesn’t want to be on his own anymore. He can’t do this by himself, not right now. Maybe eventually. Maybe eventually he’ll need to do it on his own, to prove to himself he can, but now is not the time for it. Right now he can’t be Bucky without Steve as his side. Right now he needs that anchor to reality. He needs the reminder of who he wants to be. Or at least try to be. Or be adjacent to.

When it filters through that Steve has gone quiet, Bucky makes the effort to focus on him again, to do more than passively absorb what he was saying.

Steve is looking at him. Bucky lifts his head, and Steve must see that he’s paying more attention, because he smiles, and squeezes Bucky’s ankle.

“You were always my best guy, Buck. Even though you weren’t my fella.”

Bucky thinks about that for a moment. He thinks about some of the things he remembers about Steve, the tangible ones like the softness of his hair, the way his skin stretched over his ribs. The way he smells (smelled?) at the nape of his neck. He thinks about the way he never really wanted anything beyond taking care of Steve.

“Yeah,” he replies, slowly. The word comes out of his mouth dreamy, like he’s speaking from far away. Perhaps he is. “But I kinda was, wasn’t I?”

Steve just stares at him, obviously dumbstruck. Which is is an answer in itself.

\----

Steve stares at Bucky, unable to find the words to say, ‘Yes. You were. Even though you never were, you were.’

But Bucky seems to understand. He gives a shrug, one shouldered and somehow wry, despite the neutrality of the expression on his face. And then he unfolds himself and leans forward, all while Steve is still staring, and presses a kiss to the corner of Steve’s mouth.

While Steve watches-- still incapable of speech, or thought really-- Bucky stands and leaves the room.

He’s still in the same spot, blinking slowly, his fingers pressed against his lips, where Bucky had kissed him, where he can still feel Bucky’s lips, like a brand, like a tattoo, minutes or ages later when Bucky comes back into the room.

“Can I use your shower?” he asks.

Steve blinks again, and raises his eyes to Bucky’s face. Bucky had kissed him. “Sure.”

Bucky nods and leaves again.

\----

Steve comes looking for him, eventually.

Bucky knew he would. Steve worries. It seems to be all he does, since Bucky came and found him. Bucky feels like it was always this way, only Bucky used to worry a lot more about Steve than he thinks Steve did about him. He wonders if he’ll be able to do that again. Worry. Worry about Steve.

Somehow, he expects that the worrying, if nothing else, is something he’ll be able to find again.

He’d left the door to his room open a crack, and the bathroom open as well. Steve never comes into his room without knocking first, without waiting for Bucky to grant him permission. There have already been one or two nights where Bucky wasn’t able to drag himself out of the bed, able to form the words to say ‘Come in’, and Steve never crossed the threshold. As far as Bucky can tell, he sat outside the door and talked to Bucky for the rest of the night, but he didn’t come in.

When Steve knocks on the bedroom door with a tentative, “Bucky?” he’s in the bathtub, curled up on his side, reading his latest text from Jarvis.

“Yeah, in here,” he replies without moving.

He lifts his head when Steve pokes his head into the bathroom.

“Are you…?” Steve starts to ask. He breaks off and just stares for a minute.

“Take a picture, Steve,” Bucky mumbles. 

Steve smiles, a little. “You okay?”

“Yeah,” he answers. His phone beeps and he glances at it, and puts it down next to him. “Relatively, at least.”

Steve smiles again. “Understandable. Um.”

Bucky looks at him again. He can see the question in Steve’s eyes, and he can see that Steve doesn’t know how to ask it. Or isn’t sure he is allowed to ask. And perhaps it’s unkind of him, to wait for Steve to force the words out. Or maybe some part of him knows that sometimes he has to let Steve work up to something at his own pace. Maybe some part of him remembers.

“Would you mind if I sit with you, for a bit?” Steve asks, after a minute of gazing at him.

Bucky nods. “Sure, ‘s’fine.”

“Okay, good, thanks,” Steve says, smiling a little. He looks… worried, and Bucky doesn’t know how to tell him to stop.

“I’ll just-- I’ll be right back,” Steve adds.

Bucky shrugs. He listens though, as Steve leaves the bathroom. He can hear him in his room, and it makes his skin prickle, but after just a moment, he’s able to decipher that Steve is gathering something off the bed, and his stomach stops twisting itself in knots.

Steve returns with his arms full of blankets and pillow, and he dumps them on top of Bucky.

“That looks really uncomfortable,” Steve informs him. “This might help?”

Bucky looks up at him over the pile of his blankets and favorite pillow, and nods. Steve smiles down at him and leaves again.

“Be right back!” he calls back.

Bucky listens again, to the faint noises of Steve moving through the apartment. He probably wouldn’t be able to hear anything at all if it weren’t for his enhanced hearing, but he can tell that Steve is gathering things.

When he returns, he’s got a couple of cushions off the couch, and his sketchbook and tablet and a couple of bottles of water. He hands one to Bucky, and settles himself on the floor next to the bathtub. Once he’s settled, he opens his sketchbook and picks up a pencil. Bucky listens to the soft scratches of Steve’s pencil against paper.

“Do you want me to put on some music or something?” Steve asks, after a few minutes.

“No,” Bucky replies.

“Okay.” Steve goes back to his drawing.

It’s nice. Steve doesn’t insist on talking to him, or ask him why he’s in the bathtub. Steve doesn’t even ask him if he’s going to get out of the bathtub, or when. Steve just sits with him, quietly keeping him company. It’s nice. 

He wonders if they used to be like this, quiet together, easy. He wonders, and he puts it aside to ask Steve about. Later. Later, when he has more words, when he doesn’t need to be in the bathtub. Later, when. Later.

Later, when Steve is dozing off next to the tub, slumped over on the cushions in a way that’s going to give him a huge crick in his neck, Bucky stops watching him, and starts speaking. He doesn’t want Steve to sleep, not yet. Not like that, anyway. If he’s going to sleep in here with Bucky, he should be more comfortable.

“I don’t like this tub as much,” he says. 

Steve starts, and snorts a little and sits up, rubbing his face. “As much as what?”

“The one at the motel. It was smaller. I had one side against my back. And a big ass gun.”

Steve turns so he can look at Bucky. He puts his arms on the side of the tub and rests his chin on his forearm. “What happened to the gun?”

“Left it behind.” Bucky makes a noise, in his throat, like a shrug. He doesn’t move his shoulder with it. “Still, I have lots of knives.” 

Steve doesn’t seem surprised or upset by that. Steve might even be okay if he got another gun. Maybe not now. Maybe eventually. “That’s good,” Steve says. “You’re safe here.”

Bucky looks at him, intent. He wants Steve to know he’s serious. “If shit goes down, I’ll have your six, Steve.”

Steve smiles and nods a little. He understands. “Thanks.”

“Jarvis told me where the weapons are in the Tower, too. I don’t have clearance or access to that floor but I think if circumstances warrant, he would override those protocols for me.”

“You talk to Jarvis?” 

Bucky picks up his phone and holds it out so Steve can see. “We text, mostly. It’s less startling than the disembodied voice.” 

After a moment, he adds, “Sorry, Jarvis.”

His phone beeps. He picks it up, and he can feel Steve’s gaze on him while he reads the text Jarvis had just sent. 

“Jarvis says it’s okay. He says he can text you too, if you prefer. He also says-- Yanno, this would be easier if you just sent it to Steve’s phone, Jarvis.”

“Please do,” Steve adds. “I’d like that.”

Steve’s phone beeps, and Bucky is almost certain without Steve even looking at it that it’s Jarvis, saying, ‘Very well, sir.” Jarvis still calls him sir sometimes too, although he’s said he doesn’t like it, because he’s not a sir. He’s not even quite Bucky, let alone a sir. But Jarvis forgets sometimes, or slips, or reverts to his original programming or something like that.

“What do you talk about with Jarvis, Bucky?” Steve asks, voice soft, drawing him back out of his thoughts. “If you don’t mind my asking.”

Bucky looks at him. “You can ask me anything, Steve. I don’t know if I’ll be able to answer you a lot of times. There’s holes, in my head. In the stuff that should be there. Things are weird. But you can ask.”

Steve nods. “Thank you.”

Bucky thinks for a minute before he speaks again. What do he and Jarvis talk about?

“I’m not a thing,” he says.

“Of course not!” Steve replies. Bucky just gives him a look, because he knows that Steve had seen the way he was, they way they made him. Steve was treated like an experiment once upon a time too, like a thing to be formed and shaped and then _used_.

Steve seems to understand the look, because he presses his lips into a straight line and shuts his eyes for a moment, and then nods.

“Jarvis says he is technically a thing, but I’m not. I’m not. I’m not. I wasn’t always treated like one.”

Bucky pauses, remembering. Steve doesn’t interrupt him.

“Not Sascha,” he goes on. “Sascha was shit. Utter shit. But before him. They didn’t always wipe me, you know. Not for a long time, not until I started to remember on my own. Before. I think the Russians were all right. I believed in them, I needed something to believe in, and they made me think I was doing good work. I thought I was doing good things, for them. They told me I was Russian, after I woke up, after Zola the first time. Of course, they had to teach me Russian first, but I was an amnesiac, what did I know? Still miss the food, sometimes.”

“We can go out for Russian if you want,” Steve speaks up, from his spot next to the tub. “Nat can probably recommend a place for us to try.”

Bucky nods, and then realizes Steve maybe can’t see him, since he’s laying in the tub and Steve doesn’t seem to be looking at him. “Yeah, maybe,” he allows. 

“I think I like her,” he says after a moment. “She nearly killed me.”

“She is pretty fierce,” Steve agrees.

There is quiet for a while, broken by the sound of Bucky’s phone beeping. 

Bucky chuckles, and then he tells Steve what Jarvis had told him. “I have a weird prosthetic that I don’t really like, and I have issues… processing emotions and probably with being around people and loud noises startle the shit out of me, and Jarvis tells me that I’m not a whole lot different from many combat vets.”

Steve gives a watery laugh, and Bucky knows that he made Steve sad again. It hurts, making Steve sad. 

“Me too, probably,” Steve says. “They call shell shock PTSD these days.”

“Yeah, that. Afghanistan is fucked up.”

“It is.”

There is quiet again, the only sound that of the air cycling on and off. 

“I’m sort of okay right now,” Bucky says, eventually. “Right now, anyway. But not really.”

“I know, Buck. Me too. Well, for different reasons.”

Bucky chuckles again, and it sounds fatalistic and unhappy even to his own ears. “After all, I am spending my time in a bathtub right now.”

“You could get out.”

“Nah,” Bucky replies. “Later. I’m good here, for now.”

“Okay,” Steve says, and he doesn’t push it. He just seems to accept that Bucky needs to spend time in the bathtub right now. Bucky appreciates that, and he hopes that Steve knows it, because he doesn’t know how to articulate how he feels right now.

Probably something to do with the PTSD Jarvis has been telling him about.

“Tony brought me a thing earlier,” Bucky says, eventually, to break the silence. 

“Oh yeah? I didn’t know he’d come up here.”

“It was while you were out with Natasha.”

“Ah,” Steve says, nodding. “He likes to spring things on people, sometimes. I can talk to him about it, if you want?”

Bucky shrugs, even though Steve can’t see him. “It’s fine. Jarvis warned me.”

“What did he bring you?”

Bucky holds up the hand, the one that doesn’t quite belong to him, for all that it’s his and he won’t give it up, showing Steve the little covers on the ends of his thumb and first two fingers. He wiggles his fingers, to draw attention. “So the touchscreens work, with the hand.”

Steve grins at him. “Buck, that’s great. I’m glad.”

“Tony’s not so bad, I guess. He said a bunch of other stuff.”

“What else did he say?” Steve sounds a little bit far off, like he’s divided his attention now, and Bucky lifts his head enough to see that Steve is doodling in his sketchbook. It looks like he’s trying to be… nonchalant, Bucky thinks. Like this is important but Steve doesn’t want him to know.

“I dunno,” he says. “Just stuff about tweaking touchscreens and updating the virtual screens for in here. I don’t know. It was a lot of words.”

 

“Yeah,” Steve agrees. “Tony does tend to talk a lot more than necessary. And then some more after that, even.”

 

They’re silent for a while, as if to highlight just how much Tony needs to fill every silence with words, with movement. Bucky listens to the movement of pencil against paper, listens to Steve’s slow breaths, and thinks about the way Steve’s heart is beating in his chest, slow and steady now, strong and alive and sitting next to him.

“I could, um,” Steve starts, after a while. His voice is a study in casualness, and Bucky doesn’t believe it for a second. “I could join you. If that would help?”

Bucky smiles, and then smiles some more at the fact that he was able to smile. “Yes. Thanks.”

Steve puts down his sketchpad and stands up. He stretches, and Bucky looks up at him, watches him stretch and yawn. Bucky watches him, and tucks the sight of that little strip of bare stomach away for later, something to think about, to cherish. 

It’s awkward, Steve climbing over him into the bathtub, and Steve looks down at him and shrugs and giggles, and Bucky watches him, and feels his mouth quirk up on one side in a little smile, and Steve settles against his back, and they distribute the covers and the pillows and it’s really actually fairly comfortable. Bucky knows he’s slept in less comfortable places, at least. The bathtub in the motel wasn’t this comfortable, for all that he’d liked it better. But here there are pillows and warmth and now Steve, and it’s okay that Steve is touching him, that Steve is touching him all over; he likes that. It’s better than his toes tucked under Steve’s thigh on the couch, and Bucky shuts his eyes and lets the closeness seep into him.

“Is this okay?” Steve asks in a whisper, breath against Bucky’s ear, and it’s more than okay but Bucky doesn’t know how to say that, so he just nods. 

“Okay,” Steve adds. He settles down and then chuckles.

“What?”

“All the lights are still on. Do you want them to stay on? I can go turn them off if you want.”

“Jarvis?” Bucky replies, and the lights dim until they’re soft and barely there, just enough that Bucky can make out the door and the fixtures.

Steve chuckles again, and Bucky feels it through his back, warming and wonderful and confusing all at the same time. 

“Oh yeah, Jarvis,” he mumbles. He turns his face down against Bucky’s back, and Bucky knows he’s blushing.

Bucky’s phone beeps, and he looks at the text from Jarvis: Sleep well.

\----

When he wakes up, Steve is stiff against him, and trembling. There are fading images in his head, ice and wind and falling, and Bucky is vaguely aware that they are not his nightmares.

“Steve?”

“I’m awake,” Steve replies, soft. His voice is wavery and watery, and Bucky turns his head a little.

“You okay?”

Steve sniffs, and relaxes a little, and nods. “Yeah, just a bad dream. Sorry I woke you.”

“It’s okay.”

“Do you have bad dreams, Buck?”

Bucky nods. “Yeah, sometimes. It was pretty awful at first, when all my memories were rewriting themselves. Hard to tell what was real and what wasn’t. Go back to sleep, Steve.”

“Okay.” Steve relaxes more, and snuggles closer, putting his arms around Bucky, and Bucky lets him. He likes it. Soon, they’re both asleep again.

\----

By the time Steve wakes up again in the morning, Bucky has been up for a while. He woke up with Steve’s lips pressed against the skin of his neck, and it felt amazing. Too amazing, and he had to stop. He had to move away, and it took ages for him to extricate himself from Steve’s octopus grip. 

He remembers. He remembers that he used to sleep behind Steve, the way Steve had been asleep behind him. He remembers how desperate he’d felt, how much closer he’d always needed to be to Steve. He remembers why he’d slept with his lips pressed against Steve’s neck. There were a number of reasons, if he’s honest, but some are more important than others.

Steve stirs and shifts, and startles upright when he realizes that Bucky isn’t in the tub anymore. He blinks, bleary, and then smiles a little at Bucky. Bucky holds out the cup of coffee he’d made for Steve. 

Steve makes a noise, like mmph, and takes the mug with another smile, brighter and happier.

“Thanks, Buck,” he mumbles. He sits up a little straighter and crosses his legs. 

Bucky takes that as the invitation it is, and climbs back into the tub, sitting facing Steve.

“I had your dreams last night,” Bucky says.

Steve blinks at him, stunned. 

“Did that happen before?”

For a moment or two, Steve continues to stare at him, and Bucky thinks maybe he won’t be capable of answering.

“I don’t think so,” Steve says. 

Bucky nods, and then shrugs. “I guess we’ll deal with it.”

“I guess we will,” Steve agrees. He takes another sip of his coffee.

Bucky nods again, and then shifts, lays back down in the tub. Steve shifts beside him, and lays his hand along Bucky’s arm. It’s nice, and quiet. Bucky lets himself drift. Steve is at his back, watching his six, and that’s good. He can see the door from his spot in the bathtub, and Steve is safe and keeping him safe, and he can breathe deeply, easily.

For this moment in time, that’s enough.


End file.
